Monday, January 31, 2005

Icarus - Son of Daedalus, with the wings of wax, tried to touch the Sun. He was on his end - Yes, i am talking about SuperComputers. Before speeding up, it has to say ' Good bye' to the world. Live its whole life inside the black glass, saying to the outer world " Hello ! You can see me, but you can't, touch me, i am so secured ."So, the fastest supercomuter, human mind,is just not ready to spend so much money, just for speed. Come on, we are human beings! Let's find something different and efficient ...
...Evolution of Distributed Computing. Just the name was sufficent to thrill the black windows of Super Computer.Distributed Computing - "Distributed computing is a programming model in which processing occurs in many different places (or nodes) around a network. Processing can occur wherever it makes the most sense, whether that is on a server, Web site, personal computer, handheld device, or other smart device" .A definition by Microsoft. And these guys have a copyright even on this!Come on , no one is going to see definitions, can you have some result please? And the answer -- Yes, look on these figures: "mailto:SETI@Home Web site FAQ points out that the most powerful computer, IBM's ASCI White, is rated at 12 TeraFLOPS and costs $110 million, while SETI@home currently gets about 15 TeraFLOPs and costs about $500K so far." and yes dear, not only that, it doesn't require those black glasses,pricy electrical power, environmental controls. Last but not the least, distributed computing doesn't required any specialized language like mpC. We can work in C; I know you all C wizards just got a wide grin on your face, ya we also know this :-).It's an environment where we can harness idle CPU cycles and storage space of thousands of networked systems to work together on a particularly processing-intensive problem.In its very begining , the growth of such processing models had been limited, due to a lack of compelling applications and by bandwidth bottlenecks, combined with significant security, management, and standardization challenges.Increasing desktop power and communication bandwidth, opens the path for distributed Computing.

Wait !!! How is it different from Computer Networks.... ???

The Key distinction is that in a distributed system, the existance of multiple autonomous computers is transparent(i,e not visible) to the user. He (or she ,if you object) can type a command to run a program, and it runs.It is up to the operating system to select the best processor, find and transport all the input files to the processor, and put the results in the appropriate place.So, distinction lies in software, not in hardware. The difference lies in who invokes the movement, the system or the user.